Welcome brianc35 as our new head admin!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rob Lay
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Rob Lay

Rob Lay

Administrator
Staff member
We are thrilled to announce @brianc35 as the new head admin of our community. brianc35 has decades experience administering forums including car communities. I will still be involved, but having brianc35 here on a daily basis in addition to reviving our Newsletter and Social will insure best practices and hopefully grow the community.

Kirillos is still our head developer and electriceddy the head moderator.

Please give us feedback, let us know what technical or community suggestions you have. This year we still need to rebrand the name and the website url, but everything else will remain the same.
 
Thank you, Rob, for the warm welcome.

I'm looking forward to interacting with you all and making sure this community thrives and has people that care behind it.

As Rob mentioned, I have decades experience in running online communities, starting my first in 1999. I am intimately familiar with the community platform on which we run.
I've been a 'car guy' my whole life. While I don't currently own an EV, they are something I have researched and follow with the idea of maybe someday as a next vehicle. In this regard, I will be here to learn from you all too.

I look forward to getting to know you all and please do not hesitate to shoot me a DM with anything on your mind to improve your experience here at InsideEVs Forum community.

Thank you!
Brian
 
Welcome @brianc35! Are you filling @Rob Lay's big shoes? I'm glad to have someone as experienced with online communities as you are to take the reins.

After the forum's split with the InsideEVs website (I'm still confused about that division), I was worried this forum would go away, but getting an admin of your high caliber calms my fears. Good luck!
 
Thanks for the warm welcome. We will share more details about the transition as they become more concrete. I just found out about it myself this morning, so you may know a bit more than I do right now. Not a bad first day :D Lots of planning and decisions to come.

What you shouldn't fear is the forum going away. Rob just invested in me and I'm making the investment in this community to grow, develop, and ensure it's longevity.
 
insightman said:
After the forum's split with the InsideEVs website (I'm still confused about that division), I was worried this forum would go away, but getting an admin of your high caliber calms my fears. Good luck!
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Inside EV's Forum was owned 51% by Inside EV's and 49% by us. They had the EV staff (Dom) and we provided the forum expertise. GMF bought AutoSport.com, Motorsport.com, and Inside EV's. They had no clue about the forum and stopped providing us staff or a link. That sucked, but they were nice enough to just give us the 51%, so we own the forum 100% now and also can do whatever we want. If the membership wants it, we can start adding content like Inside EV's with articles and videos etc or we can just stick to the forum. There are no requirements on us except that sometime this year we need to change the name from Inside EV's Forum.
 
Rob Lay said:
Inside EV's Forum was owned 51% by Inside EV's and 49% by us. They had the EV staff (Dom) and we provided the forum expertise. GMF bought AutoSport.com, Motorsport.com, and Inside EV's. They had no clue about the forum and stopped providing us staff or a link. That sucked, but they were nice enough to just give us the 51%, so we own the forum 100% now and also can do whatever we want. If the membership wants it, we can start adding content like Inside EV's with articles and videos etc or we can just stick to the forum. There are no requirements on us except that sometime this year we need to change the name from Inside EV's Forum.
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Thanks @Rob Lay, that's answers all my questions.
 
Rob Lay said:
we can start adding content like Inside EV's with articles and videos etc or we can just stick to the forum. There are no requirements on us except that sometime this year we need to change the name from Inside EV's Forum.
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Having seen what "Inside EV's" became, I'm not sure a second one adds much value. I'm here for charger technology and don't really need another set of duplicated, EV car reviews of "Press" cars.

If Tom M. would come back, it would be a good thing because his focus on chargers is useful. Perhaps invite anyone from OpenEVSE to join us. If you'd like a subject suggestion, spoofing fast DC charging interfaces to make bi-directional charging for cars that don't have it designed in.

In theory, a fast DC charger plug should have direct access to the EV battery. This could provide a substantial buffer for a home solar system, like the one I just bought. More importantly for me, it could adjust the charging rate to match exactly the solar panel production. Today, L2 chargers have relatively fixed charging rates but I want it to parallel the solar panel production.

Bob Wilson
 
I agree with you that keeping up with the press releases and rollouts is both already covered by other 'magazine' type sites and frankly, it's not sustainable with the few hands we have here.

Where we excel is in asking questions, sharing real-world experiences, and helping others work through problems/ideas/thoughts related to their EV.

I took a look at the OpenEVSE site, and they seem to already have their own product forum, so i'm not sure that we'll be attracting folks away from their own homegrown solution. The invite to join and collab with us on threads is certainly welcome.

I'm very much a fan of talking more about charging, using the battery banks as home backup solutions, integrating with solar on the roof, and all that.
 
Handling the last of the “red tape” and should have a permit to operate soon. There will be a full report once it is online.

Bob Wilson
 
Some final red tape leaves the solar panels disconnected . . . for now:
solar_project.webp
  • 13 kWh battery
  • 16 kW natural gas fueled generator
  • 200 A grid service line, $.12/kWh
  • (16) 400 W solar panels (in testing, +4 kW generated)
  • not shown, smart circuit breaker box
Requirements:
  • Undersized to NOT generate power to the grid
    • Saving $0.12/kWh grid charges
    • Avoiding: $0.05/kWh grid payment rate
  • Retain natural gas generator to kick in when battery is too low
Bob Wilson
 
brianc35 said:
Thanks for the warm welcome. We will share more details about the transition as they become more concrete. I just found out about it myself this morning, so you may know a bit more than I do right now. Not a bad first day :D Lots of planning and decisions to come.

What you shouldn't fear is the forum going away. Rob just invested in me and I'm making the investment in this community to grow, develop, and ensure it's longevity.
Click to expand...
What I like, too, is that we see things on this forum, that are often not seen, at least not right away, on other more specific car manufacturer model forums. Case in point, this post by @electriceddy about a Ford battery recall. My son recently bought a Lightning. Pretty serious, but still haven't seen it reported on the main Lightning forum.
https://www.insideevsforum.com/comm...call-hv-battery-possible-short-circuit.20190/
And @electriceddy has been a great resource for electrical charging hook-ups and many other topics related to his professional experience, not to mention EVs in general. Another person, @Fastnf has also been a great resource, although haven't seen him here for a while. @KiwiME is another. So yeah, some very knowledgeable people here that make this forum very valuable.
 
R P said:
What I like, too, is that we see things on this forum, that are often not seen, at least not right away, on other more specific car manufacturer model forums. Case in point, this post by @electriceddy about a Ford battery recall. My son recently bought a Lightning. Pretty serious, but still haven't seen it reported on the main Lightning forum.
https://www.insideevsforum.com/comm...call-hv-battery-possible-short-circuit.20190/
And @electriceddy has been a great resource for electrical charging hook-ups and many other topics related to his professional experience, not to mention EVs in general. Another person, @Fastnf has also been a great resource, although haven't seen him here for a while. @KiwiME is another. So yeah, some very knowledgeable people here that make this forum very valuable.
Click to expand...
Shout-out to the brilliant @MrFixit on the Clarity forum.
 
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